This blog began in 2007, focusing on anthrax vaccine, and later expanded to other public health and political issues. The blog links to media reports, medical literature, official documents and other materials.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

A group of psychiatrists [UPDATE: See Dr. Jeffrey Kaye's analysis of the panel composition] offered their forensic expertise in solving the anthrax criminal investigation, by using their insight into the criminal mind. Somehow DC Judge Royce E. Lamberth blessed them, and FBI paid the $38,000 bill. The group only had one suspect, whose confidential medical records were supplied by the FBI. The Executive Summary makes clear that the panels' conclusions were built into its charge:

...the Panel was asked to offer, based on the available materials, a better understanding of Dr. Ivins’ mental state before and after the anthrax mailings, his possible motives — and the connections, if any, between his mental state and the commission of the crimes.

If the group's trove of documents resembled that of the National Academy of Sciences panel, then it was carefully cherry-picked, designed to elicit a single conclusion. The NY Times' Scott Shane notes their conclusion:

“Dr. Ivins was psychologically disposed to undertake the mailings; his behavioral history demonstrated his potential for carrying them out; and he had the motivation and the means,” the panel wrote in its 285-page report, released at a news conference on Wednesday... It also found that Dr. Ivins, who was 62 when he died, was “homicidal” in the last weeks of his life. Only his involuntary commitment for psychiatric treatment, the panel wrote, “prevented a mass shooting and fulfillment of his promise to go out in a ‘blaze of glory,’ “ the report said.

How much of their evidence is derived from Ivins' alcohol abuse counselor, who was under house arrest at the time and working with the FBI in the final months of Ivins' life? Was her profound conflict of interest clear to these experts?

How could these experts possibly know Ivins had the motivation and means, when the FBI failed to produce a logical motive or provide evidence of means?

The key themes were revenge, a desperate need for personal validation, career reservation and professional redemption, and loss. These themes guided him not only in making the attacks, but in choosing his targets and shaping his methods...

The [mail]box thus appears to have represented to him the two key reservoirs of his obsession and rage. Dr. Ivins’ statements to therapists and the FBI suggest that KKG represented authority and all the successful, talented, attractive people who had rejected him and inspired his rage. Princeton represented his father and perhaps his unmet college aspirations and the humiliation and rage wrapped up in these concepts for him. For him, dropping anthrax in this [mail]box appears to have represented both a conquest and a desecration — in short, payback.

Is psychobabble too strong a word to describe this outpouring of gibberish?

UPDATE: Scientia Press has an analysis of Ivins' criminal propensity/ lack of any history of aggression here.

This report was completed last August, but was pulled out of the deep freeze yesterday in a last-ditch attempt to trump the NAS report. The website that offers this report for sale, provides the Executive Summary and bios of the authors ends with the following, in a clear attempt to link this psychiatric report to the NAS report, and presumably give it equal weight in future discussions of the case.

National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Panel

Investigators in this case relied on new microbial forensic techniques developed by government, academic, and private-sector scientists to address these specific attacks. Because these techniques were new, the FBI requested the formation of a separate commission through the National Academy of Sciences to evaluate “the reliability of the principles and methods used by the FBI, and whether the principles and methods were applied appropriately to the facts.” At the time of this report’s submission to Chief Judge Lamberth in August 2010, that report had not yet been released. The report was released on February 15, 2011.

14 comments:

Anonymous
said...

From the blog entry:-------------From the report's executive summary:

The key themes were revenge, a desperate need for personal validation, career reservation and professional redemption, and loss. These themes guided him not only in making the attacks, but in choosing his targets and shaping his methods...The [mail]box thus appears to have represented to him the two key reservoirs of his obsession and rage. Dr. Ivins’ statements to therapists and the FBI suggest that KKG represented authority and all the successful, talented, attractive people who had rejected him and inspired his rage. Princeton represented his father and perhaps his unmet college aspirations and the humiliation and rage wrapped up in these concepts for him. For him, dropping anthrax in this [mail]box appears to have represented both a conquest and a desecration — in short, payback.

Is psychobabble too strong a word to describe this outpouring of gibberish?---------------------------------No. It's enough to make one want to tear one's hair out.

I'm half-surprised they didn't claim that Jennifer Lopez reminded Ivins of his mom and fed into his Oedipus Complex.

Sad thing is, some people will be impressed by the CREDENTIALS of the panel members (all but one an MD) and just get the gist: 'panel confirms DoJ's conclusions'.

It's really weird when there must be SEVERAL professional psychiatric societies that could have put together a panel along the lines of the NAS panel on the science of the case......

One of the interesting things in this case is how things can transition from known fact to never having been part of the government case.

In the new Wired article, the FBI Agent in charge, Edward Montooth, says that Ivins may have grown the anthrax over months.

Up to that statement, the DOJ/FBI treated it as known fact that you can grow several grams of anthrax in 24 to 48 hours and process it into powder in the same time frame, notably Friday Sep 14 to Sunday Sep 16, 2001. They didn't admit that growth times are random and growth yields random. Nor the problems in creating that many grams of powdered anthrax without them spreading.

In the Wired article, they describe Ivins as opening the letter in a glovebox and the spores hanging in the air visible to those watching.

The DOJ/FBI still won't commit to a number of how many spores and how many grams of anthrax were in the letters or even a range. The NAS provided a broad range for these in its report.

DOJ/FBI still will not release the emails from Ivins home computer and Internet account, which Dxer at Case Closed has pointed out may help provide an additional narrowing of the window on the first weekend. Those emails would still be owned by Ivins' family not owned by the government since they were done on his own computer at home.

What about the psychology of not releasing a man's emails on his home computer to his family and to his lawyer? If psychology lacks a term for this, perhaps the law can provide it.

The FBI unraveled the mystery, officials said, thanks in part to the microbiologists seated at a U-shaped table in the front of the room. Among them was Paul Keim, who first identified the anthrax strain used in the attacks, and genetic specialist Claire Fraser-Liggett, who led the team that sequenced the DNA of the anthrax in the letters, tracing the spores back to their genetic match: a flask of superconcentrated, ultrapure anthrax held by Ivins. Several of the researchers at the table had previously counted Ivins as a peer and even a friend. Now they were helping brand him a monster.Between the officials and the scientists, it was a convincing display. It had to be. Ivins had killed himself three weeks earlier. There would be no arrest, no trial, no sentencing. Absent a courtroom and a verdict to provide a sense of finality or some measure of catharsis, all the FBI could do was present its findings and declare the case closed.No one involved that day expressed any doubt about Ivins’ guilt.But things are not always as clear-cut as they may seem in an FBI presentation.Two years later, sitting in her office overlooking West Baltimore, Fraser-Liggett concedes she has reservations. “There are still some holes,” she says, staring out her window in discomfort.Nearly 2,000 miles away in Flagstaff, Arizona, Keim has his own concerns. “I don’t know if Ivins sent the letters,” he says with a hint of both irritation and sadness.Even agent Edward Montooth, who ran the FBI’s hunt for the anthrax killer, says that—while he’s still convinced Ivins was the mailer—he’s unsure of many things, from Ivins’ motivation to when he brewed up the lethal spores. “We still have a difficult time nailing down the time frame,” he says. “We don’t know when he made or dried the spores.”In other words, it’s been 10 years since the deadliest biological terror attack in US history launched a manhunt that ruined one scientist’s reputation and saw a second driven to suicide, yet nagging problems remain.Problems that add up to an unsettling reality …Despite the FBI’s assurances, it’s not at all certain

Because the emergency petition is a public court document, and because the petition referenced Dr. Ivins’ own statements that he was already a suspect in the Amerithrax investigation, local police notified the FBI. On July 11, FBI investigators interviewed, for the first time, both the therapist who had sought the emergency petition and her supervisor, the other therapist who was present in the group meeting where Dr. Ivins had made his explicit threats. Later, the FBI also interviewed Dr. Ivins’ psychiatrist, who had authorized the petition,

Please note what it says - not months of involvement with the FBI contact with the FBI for the FIRST time I would be very careful what you write.

Comments and questions regarding the membership of the committee are in order. The Chair, Dr. Gregory Saathof, has been serving, according to the bio on the website, with the FBI since 1996, an obvious conflict of interest. The presence of the two Red Cross executives on the committee, neither of whom is a psychiatrist, is inexplicable. COL David Benedek is listed as a professor at USUHS and a former director of the National Capital Consortium Forensic Psychiatry fellowship at WRAMC. MAJ Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, is a graduate of USUHS and had completed a psychiatry residency at WRAMC before being sent to Fort Hood. The history of any contact, interaction, and involvement of COL Benedek with MAJ Hasan is an obvious issue for anyone intending to assess COL Benedek's capabilities for the recognition and assessment of criminal behavior and activity.

Anthrax Redux: Did the Feds Nab the Wrong Guy?http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/ff_anthrax_fbi/

A very good and detailed long article. Does not mention the non-biological forensics not matching anything at USAMRIID (silicon and tin) - but does a good job of explaining that the biological forensics on their own are not conclusive.

Ed Montooth, head of the investigation admits holes in the case - "little" details like - how could Dr Ivins make all these spores.

More comments are in order regarding the committee. The conflict of interest associated with Dr. Saathof could have manifested itself in many ways. Perhaps he had already been consulted on the case by the FBI, and the committee was a platform to justify his own actions and recommendations. Perhaps Dr. Saathof was attempting to impress an FBI superior, or facilitate future employment with the FBI by telling them what they wanted to hear. Or perhaps he had worked with the FBI for so long that it would not have occurred to him to disagree with them, or question their methods, data, or selection of information provided to the committee. The point is that there is no way to prove that any of these possibilities are false. Dr. Saathof should have not have been allowed on the committee at all, let alone serve as Chair.

When/if all the records are ever available, we will see if the FBI first had contact with Ivins' therapist in July 2008. If he was truly their main suspect for many months (or years) and they were truly ready to close the case when he died, it is hard to understand why they had not contacted the therapist (nor obtained Ivins' DNA) sooner than July 2008.

Agreed, that's very curious. It just doesn't sound like the way FBI has operated. Another huge issue: the 299 page book "The Amerithrax Case: Report of the Expert Behavioral Analysis Panel" by Dr. Saathof et al, available from Lulu.com (the internet self-publishing company) for $41.73. To some, that looks like the most egregious violation of HIPAA ever perpetrated, and now the committee is making money off it.

After swimming with dolphins at Key Largo, they checked me out at the edge of the pool

Visiting a Bhutanese Dzong, the regional seat of both government and religion (and a fort for good measure)

Why am I blogging?

Because life is meant to be lived! The left side of this blog has photos of some peak experiences. And the right side contains information about which I am passionate.

Too many peoples' lives are characterized by lack of authenticity, and fear of acknowledging and expressing their true nature. Employees cannot say what they think at work, and in the corporate system we must squish ourselves into square holes when we are round pegs. We thus lose touch with our souls, becoming cogs in a soulless, profit-driven machine.

The culture of political correctness has meant, in medicine, that we ignore how the foundations of our science are being undermined by commercialism. Clinical data generated or presented by the manufacturers of drugs, vaccines and devices cannot be trusted: there are hundreds of studies proving this. But this fraudulent information continues to be the only data informing the approval of vaccines, drugs and devices.

Unless scrupulous ethical conduct is demanded of physicians and biological scientists, our lack of meaningful standards will carry the medical-pharmaceutical system down the path of increasing irrelevance.

Medicine and its tools need to be affordable. The current medical-industrial milieu, characterized by contempt for science, countless ways for insiders to achieve wealth due to failure of good governance, and regulatory agency-to-industry revolving doors, has ushered in stratospheric pricing... further kicking us down that path to irrelevance.

Why is our new health care plan a giveaway to health industries instead of to health consumers? Why won't it cover all Americans? Why was the "public option" never an option for the Obama administration? Why did the promised Trump health plan evaporate the moment he was elected?

So many of our leaders carry a heavy burden of mendacity and avarice. If they instead got in touch with their own souls (perhaps by exposure to the natural world), or made their decisions by maximizing the amount of good that results, our leaders might find real meaning and value in their lives.

Until that happens, the only way to straighten out the current mess is to demand accountability and impose penalties on unethical/dishonest leaders. Both political parties enjoy bounteous hors d'oeuvres from Pharma's table, making it unlikely the existing political "process" will provide relief--as we've seen in the demoralizing healthcare reform drama.

Until then, I'll continue to "call it as I see it" in this blog -- working and living the way life should be, in rural Maine, far from the centers of power.

Ellen Byrne has created several designs encapsulating aspects of the FBI's ridiculous case against Bruce Ivins. They can be purchased on T-shirts and coffee mugs. All proceeds will be donated to the the Frederick County chapter of the American Red Cross, a favored charity of Dr. Bruce Ivins.